I'm pleased to report that cockfighting has finally been banned in New Mexico.
One great result of Bill Richardson's run for president has been his Wyatt Earpish attitude toward New Mexico's general backwardness. We were long one of only two states to tolerate cockfighing (Louisiana was the other). Richardson came in to office determined to eliminate the practice, and as of June 15, the law that he signed banning cockfighting takes effect.
One would have thought that cockfighting would have disappeared much earlier--going the way of bear-baiting and other blood sports--but attempts to make the practice illegal were stymied again and again by New Mexicans claiming that cockfighting was a key Hispanic cultural practice, and attempts to ban it nothing more than ethnocentrism. What it finally took to ban the practice was a governor who, himself Hispanic, decried that presentation and said that it was time for New Mexicans to reject animal cruelty.
You can read about the ban and the history of legislative attempts here:
http://www.lcsun-news.com/...
You'll notice that a disappointed cockfighting "enthusiast" compares cockfighting with hunting and fishing--which just shows you the depths of the denial that some people are in. Killing an animal for food is equivalent to breeding two roosters to be killers, putting spurs on their feet, and encouraging them to slash each other to death, while people scream and place bets?
Um, no.
Some cockfighting will probably still go underground; but I celebrate that now my fellow progressive New Mexicans and I don't have to be embarassed about the legality of cockfighting any longer!